Is Survival mode even possible?

[Duskmare]

I gave it about 6 tries and never once got past the first temperature drop. It seems like people get sick way more often, as though the temperature levels were always secretly one colder compared to normal. So I keep ending up with about 20 gravely ill (or dead) and about 15 just ill. So I only have about 50 people, but minus the hunters (15), researchers (5), healers (5-10), coal miners (10-15 to barely stay afloat) and food prep workers (5) it barely leaves anyone for gathering the actually useful materials like wood and steel. So I just end up stalling with no way to get wood, people getting more and more sick, research not happening and everyone starving because there's just not enough food.

I even tried rushing to get my scouts out and gather the resources and people around the area, but the more people the more problems. More sick beds, more housing issues, more food needed. It was just awful.
I also tried blasting the important things with extended shifts at the start of the game to create more of a buffer but that didn't help either.

So, is it actually possible to manage this mode? What's more is it possible to manage this mode without picking every single evil but efficient option?

[nangasaur]

Micro your people.
Stay in your research tiers.
Don't scout early - you have the entire unlimited game to scout.

[Duskmare]

Originally posted by nangasaur:

Micro your people.
Stay in your research tiers.
Don't scout early - you have the entire unlimited game to scout.

Not sure what you're saying here...

Kill off my people so they become a managable number? Or does "micro your people" mean something else?

Stay in my research tiers? Alright, but when do I know when to advance a tier then, or do I just stay with 0 extra tier levels forever?

Unlimited game? You mean about 40 days when the storm comes to murder you? Plus, scouting gets you a lot of good stuff and extra workers, why would I not do that?

Oh, just realised you might have thought I meant endless mode. Nope, I meant survival mode for the "A New Home" scenario.

[mr_bman]

Don't leave 5 guys working on food prep when you don't have raw food to cook - so micro-manage those and put them on to a different job until you do get raw food to cook. Starting out you only need a couple of guys cooking anyways.
Turn on your generator overdrive during working hours so your workers get more heat while they're inside their chilly working areas. Also turn on the heaters. It doesn't use anymore coal by boosting the generator up but heaters will use up more coal.
Stick with the plan of gaining more coal than you use - however you can do that. If you think you have enough coal, you don't. It's like that.
Get the healing house so you don't have to use engineers as doctors. Use child labor to increase your work force, extend working shifts and have an emergency shift. I usually use emergency shifts on workshops to knock out research.

[OvercriticalOwl]

Originally posted by Duskmare:

I gave it about 6 tries and never once got past the first temperature drop. It seems like people get sick way more often, as though the temperature levels were always secretly one colder compared to normal. So I keep ending up with about 20 gravely ill (or dead) and about 15 just ill. So I only have about 50 people, but minus the hunters (15), researchers (5), healers (5-10), coal miners (10-15 to barely stay afloat) and food prep workers (5) it barely leaves anyone for gathering the actually useful materials like wood and steel. So I just end up stalling with no way to get wood, people getting more and more sick, research not happening and everyone starving because there's just not enough food.

I even tried rushing to get my scouts out and gather the resources and people around the area, but the more people the more problems. More sick beds, more housing issues, more food needed. It was just awful.
I also tried blasting the important things with extended shifts at the start of the game to create more of a buffer but that didn't help either.

So, is it actually possible to manage this mode? What's more is it possible to manage this mode without picking every single evil but efficient option?

Done it on medium, hard is proving challenging.
What i do:-
-Start the game, pause.
-Choose overtime law.
-Assign all my worker to wood/steel (with 5 workers on coal)
-Until the temperature starts dropping you don't need the generator on during the day (snowflake over building shows when you're gonna start having major problems).
-Start the day
-As soon as the workday is finished, pause and build tech, medical post, gathering posts, etc. Make sure you have 10 wood left over.
-Start the genny and unpause
-When tech building is finished, fill it with 5 engineers and activate 24h rule. I like to start off with the faster gathering tech (costs 10 wood, that you saved from before).
-Go into next day with gathering posts and people gathering off piles quicker 'cause of your research.

-Only stick 1 or 2 (just enough to get it producing food) on the cookhouse at the start when people start getting hungry (end of day 2 or 3).
-I like to rush wall drill for wood at the start, because it's so much faster and needs less people then sawmills.
-End of the day is best to build if you have the choice because it won't drag people off their workplaces.

I welcome tips from others, i'm not the best like i said. Hard survival is proving difficult to crack.

[Budoshi]

Originally posted by Duskmare:

I gave it about 6 tries and never once got past the first temperature drop. It seems like people get sick way more often, as though the temperature levels were always secretly one colder compared to normal. So I keep ending up with about 20 gravely ill (or dead) and about 15 just ill. So I only have about 50 people, but minus the hunters (15), researchers (5), healers (5-10), coal miners (10-15 to barely stay afloat) and food prep workers (5) it barely leaves anyone for gathering the actually useful materials like wood and steel. So I just end up stalling with no way to get wood, people getting more and more sick, research not happening and everyone starving because there's just not enough food.

I even tried rushing to get my scouts out and gather the resources and people around the area, but the more people the more problems. More sick beds, more housing issues, more food needed. It was just awful.
I also tried blasting the important things with extended shifts at the start of the game to create more of a buffer but that didn't help either.

So, is it actually possible to manage this mode? What's more is it possible to manage this mode without picking every single evil but efficient option?

same after 4 to 5 tries i gave up entirely i had also hazard mode on too so ya,....,no room for error kind of game play is quite annoying and frustrating , im playing serenity with hazard on and its better. i may try survival at some point though.

[lordcrekit]

What are you kidding about not scouting? Scouting can easily net you like 39+ raw food for a days worth of work. That's so good.

Notes from my attempt so far:

- DON'T RUN OUT OF FOOD. They will eat all your raw food, and once that starts happening you are royally ♥♥♥♥♥♥. You cannot recover from that (even if you do, it costs too much resources and you'll die of other causes)

- Do not let people go into care houses. You need them working. Don't let people work in frostbite conditions!

- Get heater. GET HEATER. When your cookhouse stops working because it's too cold, you're going to hit condition one and then you're royally ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

[Shining Hector]

What I've found is Hothouses and Child Labor are pretty much mandatory on high difficulty settings. Hunters simply take too much manpower without lots of upgrades. Even with the first upgrade and Soup, on Extreme you still need 30 workers to end up with 80 rations a day with hunters, while 10 children can effectively produce 100 rations a day with a base Hothouse with 14 hour days and a Shrine using Soup. In A New Home, you sadly have to wait until scouting Winterhome for the Purpose laws, but it still amounts to 10 kids feeding your starting population. You have to research Sawmills first because you simply don't have the option of waiting for Wood Drills, then Beacon (you probably won't have the wood up front to skip to Tier 1), then Tier 1, then Hothouses.

[Duskmare]

Originally posted by lordcrekit:

What are you kidding about not scouting? Scouting can easily net you like 39+ raw food for a days worth of work. That's so good.

Notes from my attempt so far:

- DON'T RUN OUT OF FOOD. They will eat all your raw food, and once that starts happening you are royally ♥♥♥♥♥♥. You cannot recover from that (even if you do, it costs too much resources and you'll die of other causes)

- Do not let people go into care houses. You need them working. Don't let people work in frostbite conditions!

- Get heater. GET HEATER. When your cookhouse stops working because it's too cold, you're going to hit condition one and then you're royally ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Yeah, I did all that for a run but ended up running out of almost everything towards halfway though the first storm.

Built gathering posts so people could still work gathering things without being cold. Had two hunter huts, but then could only barely staff them. Food ran out anwyay, even though i was getting 32 raw food each day because of hunter research. Then they started eating the raw food before it could be cooked and that was the end of that. No idea why the food didn't outnumber the people when i should have had at least 32x4, though I think I had soup too so it should have been 32x5, which is way more then enough for the 80 people you start with.

The real killer is how many people get sick. By day 5 you've only got half your people able to work. Either they're sick or they die, and I've been trying to at least keep people alive with the care homes. I mean, if you can't complete the survival mode without letting lots of people die and passing loads of evil laws then what's the point? It's supposed to be as much a moral choice game as it is a survival one.

[Spark0]

Here is what worked well for me (Still on the save so long term I cannot give you much more to go on)

=Your kids (great manpower at the beginning). Choose Child work law first.

=Max out all your wood. Put 15 workforce on a coal 1 coal pile. And any left over on metal (you don't need metal until your first temp. drop for outdoor work heated shelters).

=Only turn on your heater at night. Approx 19:00 hrs or 20:00 hrs until the next work rotation - 08:00 hrs

=Only build when the workday is over (you want all manpower where you decide it).

=Build 2 medical posts at the start and all your homes. (you will get approximately 5-10 sick people off your first night (so fill your medical posts with your engineers - you should be able to have saved up I think 15-20 metal for your first resource structers -from point 2 ^^)

=Next law. Soup. (Your first goal is to get food going).

=Now that you have wood from your second day (cause with medical posts, you really shouldn't be touching your manpower), build 2 hunters lodges and 1 cooking cabin. (Get kids to rotate in and out of this building - so cook soup until your rations go to zero then send them back out to gather resources).

=The night of your built hunters lodges, max them out with workers and get all the food you can (they will work immediately once built cause hunting is at night )

=Just before first frost, make sure you have your outdoor resource shelters built (try to build them at the most abudant resource areas first then work your way back to the lesser ones you started to draw from. Build at least 2 (1 for coal area) (1 on 2 wood/1metal area). Make sure nobody is working in the cold (remove them from the piles, only have them gather from heated posts)

=The night before first frost I think you should have enough metal to build a research house. You need to start to research heaters (so you can operate your cooking cabin - you should have enough rations from the soup to last you until you have this researched).


So that plan should get you through your first temp drop. The next points are just overall what you should pay attention to.

Your next subsequent laws should be medical (it benefits to have overcrowding so 1 medical post can hold 10 people at a time). Then you can decide down the road on how to handle dead bodies (so far I didn't have a single person die)

Always grab resources from your scouts before you get more people (and try to plan ahead by cheating on wikipedia/scouting so you know what has what. Build empty houses and extra buildings before you get a manpower increase so you can utilize them right away and they arent draining you completely when they arrive.

Micro your heater to turn on overdrive at night time only - make sure you don't have it explode!!

Controversial laws may drain hope and add discontent BUT those detriments will disappear over time.

Food production for your pop size would actually allow you to revert from Soup back to better rations. But make sure you have full soup rations before your first manpower increase.


And! Don't give in to their requests unless people need a day off work. (I had a couple of kids over two days need time off. So that was fine). But that 2 day heater challenge. Don't do it. Its a scam and there is no way to fufill that request.


Research tips. Add 1-2 more research buildings before you build your beacon. You need upgrades before you get more manpower. Get Heaters, Hunter Gear first. Then the beacon. Build your beacon. Then your first upgrade Tier (by the time your scouts are out you should be trying to research your level 2 stuff because the new housing will be on that level for them (they will freeze if not done). By the time they move in you should have your range upgraded first (because overdrive will be needed once again). Then get your sawmill. Then your Coal mine.

The game is in flux for resources. Sometimes youre in abundance or this or that. So you will need to keep changing your focus on whats next. When you upgrade, coal will be your priority to keep it going. Then back to food/wood/metal for research & explansion.

[Shining Hector]

I made a guide for Extreme Endless Endurance using the New Home resource layout, there are some differences since you have less starting resources in New Home Survivor, but the layout and first laws before you go down the Faith tree and research and building order should be pretty much the same.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1603876895

You're actually slightly better off getting Child Labor after Extended Shift, mostly because it gives you a Day 2 research boost. In man-hours, starting with Child Labor does put you only slightly ahead (1600 man-hours the first 2 days with Child Labor start vs. 1560 with extended shift on Day 2), but having 14 hours for research on Day 2 makes a bigger difference. I've been able to get away with holding off on Soup for Day 3 with a Cookhouse ready to go as well. Putting everyone to work in Gathering Posts, Sawmills, and Hothouses ASAP rather than gathering the piles also reduces sickness, even before the temperature drop.

Also, hunters are just a losing proposition on Extreme/Survivor. Try rushing Hothouses and you won't ever look back. With the first hunting upgrade, 15 workers make 16 raw food, and it's 2 raw food turns to 4 rations or 5 with soup, so it takes 30 workers - 32 raw food - 80 soup rations to feed your colony. This vs. one basic Hothouse with no other upgrades running 14 hour shift making 33 raw food per day, which can be staffed with 10 children, plus it trickles in over the day to be cooked, so there's no stash of raw food for the impatient starving people to devour.

[Hugo Drax]

Do not let your children work. This has only a benefit in the begining. You want to build child shelters and then assign them to work as medical.

You complain about the sick people, that's the way to cure it. If you need to put the children to work to survive the first storm, you're doing it wrong.

You won't be able to prepare food during the storm. Once the storm hits put all your people on thumpers and gathering posts to make sure you can supply the generator. Make sure you have enough food for two days and that's all you need. Only activate your cookhouse once you have Soup law.

When the storm is raging, do not build anything and shut down all non-essential buildings. You don't want your people outside at all unless they're bringing in coal. Build infirmary or extra medical posts and choose Overcrowding.

Build thumpers and gathering posts in advance of storm so when it hits you can have all your hunters gather instead.

Edit: Laws - 24 shift, extended shifts (put everyone on that asap), soup (start making food), child shelters (build one), medical children (exact name escapes me)

Research: gathering, beacon (get scouts out, if you get survivors so much easier, also need cores and steel), hunters, advance to 2nd tier, wall drill

Your main objective is to get everyone into bunkhouses first storm and houses for the second. You need wood and steel. Get a wall drill early, that 160 wood is golden. Do not spend steel on anything non-critical until you know you have enough to house your people.

Make sure to advance your research tier level to get the generator and heater upgrades.

[Cougarific]

All this thread shows is that there is no *One Right Way* to succeed in Frostpunk.

So many suggestions here directly conflict with each other or can be accomplished in many different ways.

Find what works for you - you don't have to try to follow anybody else's step-by-step approach. Everyone's steps will be different - there are many, many paths to success.

[Shining Hector]

Pretty much. Though anyone arguing against Child Labor on high difficulty is quite simply wrong.

By the time you don't really need child laborers, you don't really need child apprentices, either, and then you're still stuck having to build and heat a bunch of child shelters just to squeak out that marginal +20% for 8 hours a day. Just one extra House of Healing staffed with kids would do more for you than 200 medic apprentices in shelters, plus be easier to heat. Actually, if you do the math, 10 kids in a House of Healing with only 100% efficiency provide the same healing power as 150 Medic Apprentices, assuming you actually have 150 engineers healing people, which probably is never going to happen. Medic apprentices are even a waste of law signing time early on, as in the exact same amount of time you could have Organ Transplants, which provide +20% to healing 24 hours a day rather than only 8 hours a day, and just require a single snow pit rather than fiddly child shelters that require heating.

[Aturchomicz]

Originally posted by Shining Hector:

Pretty much. Though anyone arguing against Child Labor on high difficulty is quite simply wrong.

By the time you don't really need child laborers, you don't really need child apprentices, either, and then you're still stuck having to build and heat a bunch of child shelters just to squeak out that marginal +20% for 8 hours a day. Just one extra House of Healing staffed with kids would do more for you than 200 medic apprentices in shelters, plus be easier to heat. Actually, if you do the math, 10 kids in a House of Healing with only 100% efficiency provide the same healing power as 150 Medic Apprentices, assuming you actually have 150 engineers healing people, which probably is never going to happen. Medic apprentices are even a waste of law signing time early on, as in the exact same amount of time you could have Organ Transplants, which provide +20% to healing 24 hours a day rather than only 8 hours a day, and just require a single snow pit rather than fiddly child shelters that require heating.

Dont forget that with child shelters you also get a swing set behind the building

[Duskmare]

Originally posted by Cougarific:

All this thread shows is that there is no *One Right Way* to succeed in Frostpunk.

So many suggestions here directly conflict with each other or can be accomplished in many different ways.

Find what works for you - you don't have to try to follow anybody else's step-by-step approach. Everyone's steps will be different - there are many, many paths to success.

Maybe. Though a lot of the replies seem to have misunderstood the topic and are talking about the survival setting on the endless mode, not on the 'new home' scenario. I think a lot of differences in people's strategies are down to that alone.